Sundays always have a way of turning out sunny, even during the prolonged ‘winter’ we are experiencing in Nairobi, maybe that’s why it’s called Sunday. I stroll from Loita Street to the Hilton; one of the city’s iconic hotels.
Town, while bustling with pedestrians, isn’t quite as crowded as it is on working days. Indeed, the sunshine and lack of traffic allow me to gaze around and take in the back streets of Nairobi, current, modern, and yet still comfortingly oldfashioned.
A newsvendor, seated on a wooden crate, is reading a tabloid. Local and foreign publications are neatly laid out at calf level, mostly horizontally, on a plank set on stones, covered in cardboard paper. Against the shop window leans a vertical row of magazines, as if on a formal newsagent’s shelves. Publications on the stand focus on Digital House Plans and Designs, Executive Talk, the Financial Times and International New York Times. Also displayed are the New African and African Business, a dogeared copy of Monocle (July/August 2015), Time and Newsweek from the USA, magazines on automobiles and management, and several Kenyan newspapers, each shouting for attention with scandalous, bold headlines.
Nairobi Postcards-some containing images of the KICC, others an aerial view of Kenyatta or Moi Avenue-included among the magazines and newspapers, offer a different alternative for anyone who’d prefer images with minimal text that enjoy a personal Nairobian touch.
For Nairobi to be a thriving democracy, and for its residents not to succumb to fictional rules, inhabitants need to reclaim the city. Occupy Nairobi by engaging with it. This could be done by advocating against regulations that obstruct people from fully appreciating Nairobi’s architectural spectacle.
Aplan earlier this year by the mayor of Paris to replace the city’s classic, greendomed newspaper kiosks, with modernist “sardine can” mini-shops had driven more than 57,000 people to sign an online petition against it. Hundreds even accused the mayor online of architectural vandalism-by attempting to do away with the historic design, spotted in the French capital since the 1860s-with some even claiming that she was trying to make Paris as “ugly as London”.
Many Nairobi pavements are not wide or level enough to cater for a Haussmann-era kiosk or its threatened replacement. Yet imagine if the low newsstands were to disappear. On a weekday, it is not unusual to see people hovering around, reading the headlines and front pages. Removing them could kill a communal activity.
Nairobians also need to take time to consider the architecture and debates – historical and contemporary – in the Parliament buildings. I could not see any reference to visits by the public on the Parliament of Kenya website, even though I know it could be possible. Whether millennial or a senior citizen, or somewhere in the middle, these institutions, belong to its citizens.
The Supreme Court is a historic building; it should be visited for its architectural and artistic purpose just as much as it is for its technical function. Courts are living, breathing public places, and accessing them enables further understanding of their challenges, some selfimposed. Attending a trial at a high court in Abuja, I counted 29 UK-made horsehair wigs being worn in a hot room with two fans, one for the judge.
I recommend that you visit the National Archives and Old PC’s Office, custodians of your heritage, even if the latter, now the Nairobi Gallery, houses temporary exhibitions. Take a deep breath at the Kipande and Nyayo Houses for their unsettling, but unforgettable past. For buildings where daily public access may not be practical, the county government could organize open days. I have wandered around the White House lawns; imagine being able to do that at State House.
Cinemas globally, with the advent of video, cable/satellite television and online streaming, have been replaced or have re-invented themselves. The Shan Cinema, constructed in 1952, has been morphed into the Sarakasi Dome, for the public enjoyment of designs, arts and entertainment that are now seen inside.
One can catch a panorama from any of Nairobi’s towers: Times, I&M, NSSF, among others. Even the low-lying blue stone McMillan Memorial Library, offers an impressive view, as cited by Rupi Mangat. It’s like City Market has been built to leverage Nairobi’s climate. From the placing of the windows to the courtyards and concrete fins on the external walls, among other features, City Market is a “gem among Kenya’s green architectural projects”.
With apologies to E A T Dutton, this is what I crave to take Nairobi to the next level. (The italics and breaking up of the paragraph are mine.) “Maybe one day in my lifetime Nairobi will be laid out with tarred roads without potholes, and safe, reliable, frequent, affordable, integrated public transport,with avenues of flowering trees,reliable street lighting, and unbroken pavements for wheelchair users and pedestrians who will no longer run the risk of tripping or being knocked down by matatus and motorbikes when foreign heads of government are visiting.”
Of course, 90 years later, the city’s congestion is hectic enough to exhaust residents and tourists, and I still have not found a way of overcoming the arbitrary photo ban. Nor have I produced an exhaustive list of places to occupy. But we have to start somewhere, and it is more within our control to swarm the ones I have mentioned, and the ones Dutton wished for. Nairobi’s avenues, he hoped, would be “flanked by well-maintained and protected noble buildings that we may enjoy and photograph freely”
At least with photographs, we can ensure the permanent existence of our great monuments. As Teju Cole writes in his essay ‘Memories of Things Unseen’, “[W]hen the photograph outlives the body — when people die, scenes change, trees grow or are chopped down — it becomes a memorial. And when the thing photographed is a work of art or architecture that has been destroyed, this effect is amplified even further.”
